ArticleNature ecology & evolution2018
Multicopy plasmids allow bacteria to escape from fitness trade-offs during evolutionary innovation.
Article in Nature ecology & evolution, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 56 papers.
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Who cites it
56 citing papers in PubMed.
- Complex temporal dynamics of phage-bacteria populations in an animal-associated marine system.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Plasmids promote antimicrobial resistance through insertion sequence-mediated gene inactivation.Nature microbiology · 2026Article
- Heterogeneous multicopy of blaNature communications · 2026Article
- Plasmid mutation rates scale with copy number.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Hurdles to horizontal gene transfer: species-specific effects of synonymous variation and plasmid copy number determine antibiotic resistance phenotype.Microbiology (Reading, England) · 2026Article
- Tuning evolvability via plasmid copy number and regulatory architecture.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Intracellular competition shapes plasmid population dynamics.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2025Article
- The role of plasmid copy number and mutation rate in evolutionary outcomes.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
- The combination of active partitioning and toxin-antitoxin systems is most advantageous for low-copy plasmid fitness.Nature communications · 2025Article
- The extended mobility of plasmids.Nucleic acids research · 2025Review
- Cooperative resistance varies among β-lactamases in E. coli, with some enabling cross-protection and sustained extracellular activity.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Evolutionary rescue of bacterial populations by heterozygosity on multicopy plasmids.Journal of mathematical biology · 2025Article
- The metabolic burden associated with plasmid acquisition: An assessment of the unrecognized benefits to host cells.BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology · 2025Review
- Exploring the eco-evolutionary role of plasmids and defense systems in 'Frontiers in microbiology · 2025Article
- Plasmid-encoded insertion sequences promote rapid adaptation in clinical enterobacteria.Nature ecology & evolution · 2024Article
- The expression of integron arrays is shaped by the translation rate of cassettes.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Engineering plasmid copy number heterogeneity for dynamic microbial adaptation.Nature microbiology · 2024Article
- Plasmid-mediated phenotypic noise leads to transient antibiotic resistance in bacteria.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Adaptive evolution of plasmid and chromosome contributes to the fitness of a blaNDM-bearing cointegrate plasmid in Escherichia coli.The ISME journal · 2024Article
- Visualizing and quantifying structural diversity around mobile resistance genes.Microbial genomics · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Understanding the mechanisms governing innovation is a central element of evolutionary theory. Novel traits usually arise through mutations in existing genes, but trade-offs between new and ancestral protein functions are pervasive and constrain the evolution of innovation. Classical models posit that evolutionary innovation circumvents the constraints imposed by trade-offs through genetic amplifications, which provide functional redundancy. Bacterial multicopy plasmids provide a paradigmatic example of genetic amplification, yet their role in evolutionary innovation remains largely unexplored. Here, we reconstructed the evolution of a new trait encoded in a multicopy plasmid using TEM-1 β-lactamase as a model system. Through a combination of theory and experimentation, we show that multicopy plasmids promote the coexistence of ancestral and novel traits for dozens of generations, allowing bacteria to escape the evolutionary constraints imposed by trade-offs. Our results suggest that multicopy plasmids are excellent platforms for evolutionary innovation, contributing to explain their extreme abundance in bacteria.
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